Safe Preserve Us
by Paisley the Flowergirl
Summary: An incompetent sailor tries to save our friends Warley, Hollom, and Calamy from their watery graves in four chapters or less. Do read and review. Or don't. K for nautical swears.
1. Exposition

I thought that it was high time that this question be empirically addressed by someone who had a more accurate perspective than… other people? Gee, I dunno. I just sail on boats sometimes and can tell you all about halyards and sheets and stuff. Anywhom, this story takes place in an awkward muxed ip universe 'twixt the book series and movie. Make of it what you will.

I own nothing, but Barrett Bonden owns my heart and the sea, my soul.

The question: If someone were present to ensure that Warley, Hollom, Calamy, or any combination of the above survived the plot of Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World, would Jack still be able to defeat the Acheron?

The answer: Do read on.

Without Further ado…

Oil on Troubled Waters: a Tale of Salvation and Stupidity in Four Parts or more

Eastern Coast of South America; mouth of the Rio Parana; HMS _Surprise._

"Gangway for the mail, please!"

Jack Aubrey shuffled aside to let Midshipman Hollom pass by, and in the process bowled over a figure in a blue coat whose lumpy form and homely face he did not quite recognize.

"Beg pardon!" squeaked the lumpy figure, who upon further inspection appeared to be some type of midshipman. The figure cleared his throat. "I mean… beg your pardon, sir," he rumbled in a much lower and gravellier voice, touching a knuckle to his brow.

Jack peered at the strange face on his half deck. "You are excused, Midshipman… what's your name?" he asked, somewhat embarrassed that he failed to keep his mids straight after a good few months at sea.

The figure looked relieved. "Oliver, sir. Midshipman Paul Oliver, sir!"

Jack once again regarded Oliver, as his mental processes strove to add two and two to get the eventual result of seven and nine-tenths that was presently staring him in the face. He had no recollection of Oliver whatsoever. The midshipman was of medium height and dubious build, with a massive barrel chest, sticky weak arms, and a long, pointy nose with a hump in it. He was possessed of a large ponderous overhanging brow, crowned with a truly majestic pair of eyebrows the color of tar, and had an unfortunately feminine mouth and eyes somewhat prone to batting.

Frankly, Jack hadn't the foggiest notion how this unattractive cove had wound up in the waists of the HMS _Surprise,_ but there were more pressing matters at hand. "Very well, Oliver. Go bear a hand with the-" he waved a meaty hand in the direction of the other midshipmen before turning his attention back to the map he held.

"And, Oliver! Try to find yourself a better set of clothes. Your uniform-" Jack went back to tracing the delicate coastline of the Tierra del Fuego before he could conjure appropriate adjectives for the slumped, slovenly cut of Oliver's breeches.

"Yes, sir!"

Paul Oliver was indeed relieved. He scampered up to the quarterdeck and began recoiling lines, for lack of any other productive venture. The rest of the crew was occupied in bartering and badgering the assortment of native canoes pulled up along the starboard side, and Oliver wanted no part of the semi-rabid monkeys, bruised mangoes, and demure giggling ladies therein.

Oliver was, in case you are a particularly dense reader, not a Midshipman at all, on account of failing to qualify even for the "-man" part of the equation (let alone the "mid" or even the "ship" bits). Paul Oliver was, in fact, the narrator in disguise, a rather buxom young lady with a massive boll of cotton wrapped around her torso thrice in order to disguise this fact.

\

"So far, so good," she muttered to herself. "I am a brilliant genius! Of course none of them would be familiar with the song from which I took my pseudonym, 'Sweet Polly Oliver,' which happens to be about a girl who disguised herself as a man and ran off to war! At this rate, I'll have our three boys safe upon the shore and still in the quick before you can say 'foretopmast stays'l!'"

"Foretopmast stays'l," replied a genteel voice from her elbow.

Oliver let out a girlish yelp and wheeled to find a groggy-looking Midshipman Blakeney idling behind her. "Were you talking to yourself, Oliver?"

Oliver tried to look sheepish, but instead succeeded in looking merely constipated. "Just musing aloud, Will. Now don't you have some beetles to draw or Doctors to bother or dashing tales of Nelson to read?"

"Not presently. Are you sure you're not a young lady disguised as a Midshipman?"

"Why would you think a thing like that, Will?"

"Oh, no reason." With that, Will meandered off, ostensibly to draw beetles, bother Doctors, or read dashing tales of Nelson.

Oliver resumed her musing, ignoring the fact that Blakeney somehow knew who she was, despite the Captain's not. This was a plot hole to address at another time. "I suppose that it would be very hard to know of 'Sweet Polly Oliver' when we still have approximately thirty-five years until its printing, but I still congratulate myself for having this comfortable cushion of time-"

"Oliver! Acheron sighted, on the tenth of the month, headed South!" cried Midshipman Calamy, bounding about and putting Oliver very much in mind of a Golden Retriever puppy.

"It means we're headed 'round Cape Horn!" trilled Boyle from behind him.

Oliver belayed her line and crossed her arms, mostly to stop herself from seizing Calamy by his lapels and hauling him onto the quarterdeck before he stove his head in on a mizzen cleat. "All very good, Calamy," she muttered, adding under her breath "I write my sorry self all the way out here, thousands of miles and hundreds of years from home, to save your hide! Mind your feet, imbecile!"

With that, she turned to the bow and looked the length of the ship, South towards Cape Horn where she knew a storm was brewing.


	2. Watching Over William Warley

"We'll have them by nightfall, I'd say!" rumbled a deceptively calm Peter Miles Calamy.

"I think we've got 'im, sir!" joined Blakeney.

Oliver sidestepped to let the Captain train his telescope on the distant blotch of _Acheron_'s topgallants and mouthed the next line along with the captain:

"Don't count your eggs before they're in the pudding, Mr. Calamy."

While Oliver tried not to screech with glee and have an aneurism over hearing a real live Aubreyism, the rest of the mids peered out at _Acheron_ listing to port in the quickening breeze.

Oliver had, for the most part, been absorbed into the rowdy ranks of _Surprise_'s midshipmen. Sure, the frowzy young officer was known for having a cracking voice, shoddy knowledge of the proper use of a sextant, and was extremely private in his personal habits. Sure, he blushed red as Mars rising whenever Lieutenant Pullings so much as bid him good day. And sure, he never really tucked in to any given meal, something quite strange to the rest of the midshipmen who didn't seem to mind a few weevils or stringy gristle-bits. But he was fairly competent at mathematics, did not fear running aloft, and was somehow precognizant of most of the events that had yet occurred in pursuit of Acheron. His singular turn for prediction had made him popular with both the wardroom and waisters alike, and most seemed to forget that just a short time ago nobody had known just how Paul Oliver had appeared on the deck of their ship.

"Scratch the stay! Turn three times!" Ordered Aubrey, and Oliver bounded to the nearest tarred block with the rest of the herd to shout out "May the Lord God safe preserve us!"

Oliver flinched as the first spray of icy rain hit them in the same moment. Before the night was through, she was tasked with the weighty job of plucking one handsome tow-headed sailor from between the devil and the deep blue sea, all as they walloped 'round Cap Horn in a gale the size of France, all while making sure that both of her other marks didn't end up in the briny deep. Fuckin' piece of cake.

It was time to watch over William Warley.

May the Lord God safe preserve us indeed.

/

/

Peter Miles Calamy was just throwing the lead when he was violently assaulted from out of nowhere by a drenched Paul Oliver. The lumpy midshipman had him trussed in a (surprisingly skilful) series of bowlines before he could protest.

"It's a lifeline!" bellowed Oliver over the howling wind and lashing rain.

"But-"

"Wear it or I'll gouge your eyes out and steal your stockings, but only the right ones on both counts," retorted Oliver before retreating into the spray.

/

/

As all hands were piped to starboard rail and Jack Aubrey struck a superfluously dramatic and downright dangerous action pose off the foremast shrouds, Midshipman Hollom was likewise surprised with a lasso of bowlines thrown by Oliver. "Lifeline," roared Oliver. "And whatever you do, DO NOT lay aloft! If you're ordered to do so, I'll take your spot up there."

Hollom tried to protest, he really did; but deep down, he was euphoric that he wouldn't have to shin up the mast during this horrid, horrid storm. He tried not to make his sigh of relief too audible, but thankfully the storm snatched it right from his lips.

/

/

They were cracking on at twelve knots under a ridiculous spread of canvas when lifelines were ordered fore and aft. Nobody noticed that Calamy and Hollom were both tethered by a few of said lines, and in the pandemonium on deck a few stray ropes made little difference.

Oliver stuck close to Warley, skulking behind a gun as he took his grog; listening in as he muttered to Awkward Davies about having "every stitch of canvas flyin';" following him topside and loitering about the base of the mizzenmast as he went up to take in the t'gallant.

Oliver was, despite the near-Antarctic chill, sweating bullets.

They were headed South-Southwest, for the Horn, on beam-ends.

"Hollom! Help young Warley in the mizzen t'gallant!"

That was her cue; Oliver bodychecked Hollom from under Mr. Allen's gesticulating arm and made a run for the shrouds before she could hear any orders to the contrary. Up and over the pinrail; laying on and up, up into a bedevilment of screaming fog.

"Mr. Oliver, sir! Help me!"

Warley was grasping for the sail's skin, flapping just beyond his reach.

No pantywaist behavior now; this was serious business. Oliver swung wildly up through the futtock shrouds and bombed blindly up to the t'gallant crosstrees, praying all the while for the mast to hold just a moment longer. She knew that below more men were being ordered up; she knew that just above her head, Warley was crying "Help!"

Only a split second left to do or die.

Oliver leapt onto the footropes, seized Warley by the shoulders, and hauled him back with all her might. His hands seized on the sail, then slipped and released just as the mast cracked and fell, down a hundred feet to the swirling sea.

Oliver and Warley were falling, too.

/

/

/

An interminable distance later, the lifeline pulled taught, and there they were, swinging above the deck as somewhere at the bow Captain Aubrey and company hacked at the ropes tethering the broken wreck of the t'gallant mast to the vessel. Oliver clenched her jaw and screwed her eyes shut, willing her arms to hold onto the solid hunk of sailor that called himself William Warley, bracing for the moment when the wreckage was finally cleared and the Surprise righted herself.

There would be no mournful 'cello music, no tears running down Nagle's face as he sent his best friend to his doom. There would be no hard choice for Jack Aubrey, no "lost at sea" to be recorded in the logbook; no lesser of two evils (WEEVILS, snickered Oliver internally) to make Jack question his judgment. As her shoulders threatened to give out, Oliver reflected on this. There would be repercussions and the devil to pay-

The lifeline was freed and Oliver and Warley dropped to the deck. Oliver saw the rush of seawater on deck hastening towards her just before being swallowed by the blackness.


End file.
